I'm not american, and didn't follow that one deeply, but presumably that's not just "due to bad req. gathering", it's also due to the structure of gov procurement? E.g. it wasn't the pained users who approve the payment to the contractors, right?

You could counter "if only performance was legally included in the contracts, a better site would be delivered." Maybe, but my point is there is big difference between internal "req. gathering" that informs work while everyone is long-term motivated for good user experience anyway, vs. external contract/deadline gathering for almost adversarial "deliver worst thing that passes and walk away" settings. Brushing both under same wording feels insufficient to me.